There is a squirrel staring at me. I hate squirrels.
This week has been a focus nightmare. Rox (my dog, my baby, and the very first creature I ever loved unconditionally enough to get a real job and provide for) is very sick and unlikely to recover. They think it’s lung cancer. Not fair, since she’s only five and never smoked a day in her life. Mostly, this is unrelated to being an environmental law student – except that it presents a severe challenge to my focus and priorities. Together with the squirrel, it’s pretty near impossible for me to make sense of all this paper.
The records search continues. I spent every day this week at a different office in a different part of the great state of Georgia. Some of them quite lovely. Others, not so much. Today I’m surrounded on all sides by works of taxidermy. Stuffed bears meander along the halls. Bobcats jump out of the walls. Deer heads everywhere. There’s even a squirrel. Who stuffs a squirrel? Its uglier up close than when you see them in the trees. . .but maybe that’s because he’s been dead for years.
Anyway. I don’t really have a moral problem with (regulated) hunting, fishing, or even with taxidermy. At least the animals hunted for food have nice lives meandering around in their natural habitat, as opposed to crammed shoulder to shoulder wading around in their own shit* and drowning in antibiotics. Plus, the hunting and fishing folks contribute a fair amount of much needed money and political clout to conservation efforts, which I appreciate. We all want a healthy habitat for the animals. Some of us so we can look at them, some of us so we can shoot them. Either way, that’s less forest mowed down for subdivisions or blasted away for mines, so I think we should all get along.
But I have to admit to being a little creeped out by the sheer number of dead eyes that have been following me around today.
. . .Maybe it’s just the squirrel.
*This blog is pg-13. Now you know.